I bought another chin-up bar. The category is actually listed as “pull up bars” now, I guess you don’t have to make it all the way up with your chin. Maybe that’s too much pressure, like calling push-ups “full body straight arms” or sit-ups “nose touching knees”. It’s still a valid sit-up even if you aren’t sitting ALL THE WAY up, though mine are kind of “lean-ups” now, when I try to do them.
( Ahem. I apologize. Give me just a second. I’m just a wee bit… distracted.)
Observant viewers may have noticed the word “another” in the opening sentence: indeed, this is my fourth chin-up – sorry, pull-up bar. The second in the last 2 months.
The very observant might be moved to comment that I do not in any way resemble a person that owns home exercise equipment, in that my physique doesn’t seem all that exercised, in any observable fashion. You would be correct. I do not resemble girth, or tone, or mass, or being jacked, ripped, cut, or swole. But I have indeed purchased home gym equipment, a pursuit that ironically does not take much physical effort these days. Amazon allowed me to accomplish this task from a prone position on the couch with my feet up and my head at an uncomfortable angle, poorly supported by throw pillows. Fourteen calories, max.
( . )
This pull-up bar has metal cups that screw into the wood of the door frame - the ends of the bar fit in these cups to make certain it doesn’t slip or fall. We have wooden doorframes. We are just renting the apartment but the building is renovating every unit that empties now – creating two apartments out of every one. When we leave here, these walls will be destroyed and replaced, along with the door frames. Not that we won’t putty over the holes nicely and repaint them anyway. We’re not barbarians.
The wood in our doorframes is strong enough to hold the bar, but there is some question as to how the frame itself would handle one of those new “pressure” bars that just stretches out to push against the frame, held only by the friction of its little rubber ends. There are cracks, in our apartment, here and there, lines of fatigue. I don’t know if it can take all that pressure - it looks great, and it’s not the apartment or the doorframes fault, it’s doing its job nicely, but there is only so much it can take.
(hmn.)
My third pull-up bar, the one from last month, worked on a new combination of physics where there is a piece that goes on the other side of the door and then locks down against the top of the door frame over there, while the bar is locked by gravity against the side of the frame on the front. My family forbid me to use this one. Once it was assembled, it looked like a strange musical instrument with no strings or mouthpiece that you played by shaking it sternly.
My family is against the entire chin-up bar - pull-up bar idea. I don’t know why. Perhaps this is a compliment, a validation that they consider me a valued member of the household with no need to become jacked, ripped, cut, or swole. Perhaps (more likely) they don’t want to hear the agonizing noises of me attempting pull-ups every day.
We used to have a pull-up bar in our old apartment. It was one of the expanding ones, with black suction cups on the side to hold it. I’ve never trusted the suction cup, particularly on porous wood surfaces, even with latex paint covering the wood, because if the bar falls someone could really get hurt. During the move to this apartment we lost one of the suction cups, so it still had the ability to expand, but couldn’t hold its place on the wall because no matter how much pressure was applied, it lost its grip and the instability was overwhelming. Again, it wasn’t its fault, just that the situation was so
(Ok. I see. I think I’m getting it now. I’m sorry… I’ll stay focused here. This is a lighthearted romp through the joys of acquiring mid-level exercise equipment, meant to brighten your day (and my own) but I feel my distractions may be leaching into the groundwater here. Again, all apologies. I’ll continue.)
My very first pull-up bar was in my room at home. It used to be so high in the doorframe that I had to jump to reach it. I would play a game where I would run the three steps from the doorway to my mother’s bedroom, across the hall, and then jump on the bar and S W I N G into my own room, then mark how far I could fly. I did that for years, until my mother warned me against it, which caused me to immediately over-correct and jump too high, missing the bar altogether and hitting it instead with my forehead, the velocity angling me nearly ninety degrees, at which point I landed dramatically on my back facing upwards, the perfect position for my mother’s languid “told you so” on her way to the kitchen to make an ice pack.
I am not attempting to get “jacked”, I just want to maintain the strength I’ve gathered up ’til now and not lose my flexibility. I’m older, far past the point where I have anything to prove to anyone or show off for any reason. I just want to remember, as days progress, the very baseline fact that I am at least strong enough to support my own weight, to start each day affirming that (while most likely generating effort based noises), and to remind myself, when things seem somewhat overwhelming, to keep my chin up.
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